It was called Lun after the Russian name for a bird of prey – hen harrier. Another name for this vehicle was Project 903. It carried 6 Moskit cruise missiles (SS-N-22 Sunburn in NATO classification). Hitting four of them causes inevitable sinking of a vessel of any know type and size. The second Lun-class battle aircraft was supposed to be produced in several years but due to the end of cold war and partial disarmament the project was changed to a rescue aircraft and it was never finished. This type of vehicle called in Russian ekranoplan uses so called ground effect – extra lift of large wings when in proximity to the surface.

Lun doesn‘t have a landing gear, only a huge hydroski so there’s no way for it to get on land and for this reason a special floating dry dock was designed for it. This hybrid vehicle is driven by 8 turbojet engines. –nextpage–
Ekranoplane : avion a effet de sol - une vidéo High-tech et Science. Caspian Sea Monster. The aeroplane that never quite got off the ground-- literally and intentionally.

In the 1960s, American spy satellites photographed a peculiar object floating about in the Caspian Sea within the borders of the then Soviet Union. First, it was aeroplane-shaped-- sort of. Second, it was gigantic-- something on the order for 310 feet long and weighing up to 540 tons. Third, its wings were much too short to get it into the air. The Americans scratched their heads, dubbed the thing the "Caspian Sea Monster," and puzzled over what the heck the Soviets were doing for the next twenty years. What they were doing is testing what was then the world's heaviest flying machine, but which was not an aeroplane: the KM Ekranoplan. Though it looked something like a seaplane, it was what is known as a Ground Effect Vehicle, or Wing in Ground by those who wish to be contrary. Amazingly, the problem with the KM Ekranoplan was that it was too small.

At an altitude of 20 ft.
Ekranoplan_km - a News & Politics video. Ekranoplan: world’s strangest airplane « raincoaster. And probably the ugliest as well. diggI’m giving this the Squid tag, and Technorati can just sue me, because this has the central core of Squiddiness, the Platonic Ideal of a Squid-like quality, and that is that regardless how loathesome this thing may be you cannot possibly look away, nor think any thought but “KEWL” while you’re looking at it.

It’s just frickin’ cool! Besides which, it is a Sea Monster. Read on… Technically speaking this is not an airplane. Planes, as you may already know, have big wings because they need a lot of lift to get off the ground and start flying around and suchlike, which is mostly what planes do, although sometimes they just sit on the taxiway getting de-iced and making people impatient. But if you’re not really going to fly per se, you don’t really need wings per se. Anybody got a handy Russian/English translator? It was, to be precise, 100 metres long, about 540 tons in weight, and was equipped with an alarmingly thorough cadre of ten jet engines.
KM Ekranoplan. KOREA commercial WIG craft - ARON-7. Aquaglide 5.